


No Atheists in Foxholes (Only Ghouls)

by Skull_Bearer



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Crusades, Crusades Era Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Dehydration, General fun siege stuff, Hopeful Ending, Implied Cannibalism, M/M, No one is having a good day, Period Typical Bigotry, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Slurs, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Starvation, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:55:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29779935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skull_Bearer/pseuds/Skull_Bearer
Summary: Nicolo and Yusuf die and come back to life again and again under the walls of Jerusalem. Two exhausted, traumatised men trying to make sense of a world that has fallen to madness.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 15
Kudos: 80





	No Atheists in Foxholes (Only Ghouls)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Kaerith for beta reading this strange beast, and letting me bounce ideas off them.

Nicolo knows what has happened.

It’s not quite July. The sun is already far too high in the sky and the air feels like a charcoal fire broken open and belching heat. The sparse mouthfuls of water he’s had is brackish and the food ran out yesterday. Each breath cuts into his throat, his body wavers, as though keeping pace with the shimmering heat.

On the half built battering ram, the priest is rasping through his sermon, and Nicolo has no idea what he’s talking about. The words are familiar, the verses he knows- but it just passes through him like the heat, the blazing flame of the sun. Like death.

He’s died six times so far, but it’s only now, kneeling in the field reeking of blood and shit and rotting bodies, that it finally, finally hits him what’s happened.

He rocks back on his heels, blinking in sudden clarity. The realization strips the haze of pain and thirst and starvation and the world is suddenly, vividly real. The men around him; faces sun-stripped, are sucking on rocks to try and drudge out some moisture from their desiccated bodies. The priest’s lips are cracked and bleeding, tongue so swollen that the verses splutter out misshapen and coarse, little more than obscenities.

The gaping abyss of the camp. The bodies are piled up from the last attack. The reek from the corpses and the endless, infernal pyres. The giant siege machines dwarf the men building them, disdainful and alien as giants among ants. The flies that roil around it all, so thick and black they look like the smoke of some demonic furnace

And the walls of Jerusalem. Cracked and fractured from the previous attacks, bodies piled up by the foundations where the dead had fallen and had not been retrieved. They’d called it the holiest city in the world. This. _The holiest city in the world_.

Nicolo starts rocking back on his heels, feels laughter threaten to crack his throat, glad for once of the maddening thirst, that it allows him to stay quiet and not reveal that he _kn_ _ows_. Oh, he has seen through this ruse, this illusion, this wretched trick of the devil, oh yes.

He, Nicolo of Genoa, is in Hell.

He is not in Jerusalem. He has probably never been to Jerusalem. In fact, Nicolo is quite sure what happened. There had been that storm, on the ship from Genoa. That was it. A cunning trick by the devil. None of the ships had made it to port. They had all been swept down to the depths, into the jaws of Hell. Now their occupants were here, still dreaming of glory and redemption, when in truth they are damned, all of them damned now and forever. They will never take this city. They can build ever grander machines and the walls will just grow higher. There will be no clean wells found. No fresh food will come. No reinforcements. They will never leave. They will never die. They are damned.

And perhaps it isn’t very surprising; not for him, anyway. He had hoped- but no matter. There is no place for men like him in heaven. That part has been made vividly clear. Apparently even the Pope’s word wasn’t enough. (Then again, the Pope’s blessing was for those who had fought the Saracens. Nicolo hadn’t even managed to make it that far.)

He wonders what happened to the Saracens. Of course, they would be swept to Hell, heresy demands nothing else. Was it a great plague that killed them? Or did the wrath of God fall on them more directly in fire and destruction? For a moment, he thinks about _his_ Saracen, the dark-eyed, weary man who’d killed him on the battlefield that first time, and the other five times. Whom _he_ had killed, again and again.

He hopes the Saracen’s true death hadn’t been too wretched. At least his deaths at Nicolo’s hands had been quick, if not exactly clean. This Hell was bad enough without wishing to pile suffering upon suffering.

He wonders if his Saracen too is beginning to suspect the truth. Did Saracens understand the concept of Hell? Most likely not, or else they would not indulge in their heresy, but perhaps his Saracen was starting to understand it anyway. The last time he had seen him; there had been little of the hate and rage that had marked their first battles.

They had fought more out of routine and exhaustion, the last time; almost an hour of listless lunging before they collapsed and expired as much from heat and frustration as the many wounds that were already closing on their bodies.

It had taken only a few moments this last time just before they rose again. Shared one last look of pure wretchedness, and crawled back to their respective camps. Yes, Nicolo decides. His Saracen knew too. Perhaps he didn’t understand, bereft of the Truth of God, but he knew they were trapped. This was no battle, no holy war. This was nothing but torture. Death and death and death without peace; always and forever, amen.

The sermon ends. Nicolo rises stiffly, and wavered, head spinning. The men around him crawl back inside their tents for some shelter from the maddening heat. A few decide to waste their breaths on a few words of comfort- hope that reinforcements would come soon. That it must rain. That the Saracens must have riches upon riches of food within their walls, and when they were broken open they would feast like kings.

Nicolo looks down at his hands. He remembers the third time he’d killed his Saracen he’d caught him by surprise and run him through, lifting the man bodily off the ground with the force of his blow. Even with his armor on, he’d felt so light, his robes ill-fitting on a starved body. And that was two weeks ago. He doubted the man had gotten any better meals since then.

The commanders lurch past, kicking the shelters down to get the men moving. Get up, get to work. Cut logs to planks, nail planks to frames, construct the monstrous machines of Hell that leer over them. Men scrabbling like dying rats, like mindless ants. Build and fight and starve and die and die, again and again, and somewhere... somewhere, Nicolo can hear the devil laughing.

* * *

Yusuf knows what has happened.

It had hit him after his last, miserable fight with his Crusader. After the five previous fights, the five previous kills, the five previous deaths, it was becoming clear this was pointless. And yet, they were drawn together in battle, a long, endless fight that left them sweated dry and collapsing under the roasting sun. Rising again. Falling again. As meaningless and distant as the sun spinning above them.

They’d woken, that cycle of battle almost over. Yusuf had looked around, the dead bodies, the decay, the carrion birds, the flies. He’d met the eyes of his crusader and could _feel_ the exhausted _please God not again_ in his eyes.

And oh. Then Yusuf had known. He’d known then. There is only one such creature that haunts battlefields, graveyards, fields of carnage, one creature that can die and die and die again and again, and always get up again. He’d backed away in horror, managed to rejoin the ranks of the retreating soldiers, gone back inside the gates to try to close and lock away the reality of what was in front of him; the hideous, undeniable truth.

He pulls off his shoes, and looks at his feet. The wells in the city are still good and there is enough water for him to wash and keep _wudu_ , even as the flesh melts off his bones and leaves the tendons running down to the knuckles of his toes as stark as rocks when the sands are blown away from them.

Still, thin and skeletal as they are, they still do not resemble asses’ hooves.

Perhaps that comes later, Yusuf thinks miserably. Perhaps that is part of Iblis’ vengeance on mankind: that he allows his children to think themselves still human and holy, blessed and beloved by Allah, only for the truth to be revealed later. First this strange imperviousness to death, waking again and again among corpses. Then, after that, the terrible hunger-

Well, Yusuf rubs his knuckles against the ravening hollow of his stomach. He has reached that point, too. Two mouthfuls of bread is not enough to sustain a man and hunger is to be expected, but there must be something unnatural with such- _unending, obsessive_ hunger. Surely a man should be able to control such things.

Yusuf gives a hoarse laugh, covers his mouth to avoid waking his brother. Not that he would be likely to care. Oh Allah, wouldn’t he be _delighted?_ So pleased that God had vindicated him, and that his younger brother really _was_ the unnatural beast he’d accused him of being.

Yusuf will manage to go beyond simple a beast, eventually reaching the last step when the hooves will come, no doubt. The final barrier. That macabre hunger will finally overcome him, and he will fall upon the bodies of the dead and feast on them. Because he is no man. He isn’t really his father’s, his mother’s child, not anymore. He is a ghul, spawned of Iblis, a horrific jinn of the desert stalking the dunes and battlefields and graveyards, feasting on the dead and luring the living to their doom.

Yusuf curls up in his bed, facing the wall. It almost does not matter what happens here, now. Not as far as he is concerned. Should the crusaders break the walls and overrun the city, should his side break the siege and slaughter the invaders- it will be the same for Yusuf. He will not die, whatever happens. He will fall upon the dead like a hyena and tear them with his teeth, fill his mouth with flesh and _feast_.

He shudders, and at least he’s not so far gone that the thought doesn’t horrify him. But his stomach aches at the thought, hollowed and devouring and uncaring of _what_ Yusuf would put inside it. He screws his eyes shut. _Please, please in the name of Allah the most beneficent, the most merciful_ _,_ _please not that. Please do not abandon me_ _._ _W_ _hatever_ _else_ _I may be_ _,_ _I am faithful and have followed your path unerringly-_

Mostly unerringly. His brother would have something to say about that. Yusuf curls up in his bed, pulls the old blanket over his head. _I have tried so hard_ , he tries instead, not wanting to lie in his prayers. _I have struggled with myself and have done everything-_ his skin crawls- _to be a good man, a worthy man. Please, do not abandon me to this._

There is no answer. His stomach still roils with that hunger, and he is sure the next time he will meet his crusader in the field they will kill each other, and rise again without rest. None of the stories he had heard of ghuls ever spoke of them being redeemed.

And perhaps it is the hunger, the exhaustion, the despair and the horror, but Yusuf just gives up. He is a ghul. He is doomed to endless hunger and dreadful deeds. His brother was always happy to remind him what a sorry excuse of a human he was, and now he doesn’t need to be human at all. He should surrender to his fate and hope that Allah has some purpose in making him a ghul, that even Iblis’ jealousy might fit into some larger divine plan.

He had tried to convince his brother of that once. That Allah had known what He had been doing when he had made Yusuf. It hadn’t worked.

His mind tracks back to his crusader. He had not heard of ghuls coming from the Frankish lands, but Iblis is cunning and powerful, and men deaf to the words of Mohammed are probably easier to trick. He wonders if his crusader knows what he is, if he is a blind savage being driven by urges he cannot understand or if he is a hardened ghul, simply waiting for the final slaughter to feast.

He tries to crush down the weary relief that whatever happens to him now, at least he will not be alone in this fate.

* * *

The hunger is worse on this night.

It drags him out of fragmented dreams of women, and Yusuf is not entirely sorry about that. He has never dreamed of women in anything but a nightmare, and is glad he woke before the dream turned to memories. _The knife at his throat. The cries of the women around him. His own pleading, growing desperate._

The hunger spares him from the recollection. It locks itself in Yusuf’s belly and rages there like a maddened animal until he cannot think of anything but it. A jealous lover, it roils and gnaws and Yusuf digs his nails into his palms to try and drive it away. He runs his tongue over his teeth, lingering on the sharp points of his canines. Are they sharper than they had been? How far has he gone? How much of him is left?

No. Not yet. Please not yet. There are tens of thousands of people within the city. All it will take is one, just one to tempt him. A beautiful man, perhaps. There are many beautiful men in the city, even after the deprivation of the siege. He had never been able to say no to beautiful men before, why should this be any different?

Yusuf shoves his own hand in his mouth, bites down until he can taste blood. It’s rich and hot and so very familiar after those six deaths. Would another’s blood be any different? Would it be enough to drive him to madness and slaughter? _How long does he have?_

Yusuf stares up into the dimness of the night, too terrified to move. All this horror outside the walls; and here is Yusuf; secret jinn of Iblis, coiled within like a poison.

He needs to leave.

They always need warriors at night, harrying attacks on the edges of the enemy’s camp, sabotage raids to hit the war machines. They would welcome Yusuf’s blade. And if the madness were to overtake him then, he could turn himself away from his people and focus his ghul hunger on the invaders. It was not as though those beasts were strangers to feasting on human flesh, if the tales from Antioch were to be believed.

And then- Yusuf does not know. Perhaps he will die. As there are seven heavens, seven earths and seven days in the making of the world, perhaps his seventh death will be the one to destroy him.

He gets up stiffly, trying to straighten against the knot in his belly. He gathers his saif, and belts it tightly around his waist. It hangs loosely against the edges of his hipbones. Armor he discards, it’s not as though it will do much, but he picks up a flask of water and shakes it, it's mostly full. He toes on his boots and steps around the hanging curtain that delineates his part of the room.

His brother is awake, sitting on the edge of his bed and staring at the floor. He lifts his head and meets Yusuf’s gaze with weary loathing. “What perversity are you leaving to engage in?” The flames of his anger are long gone, leaving only dull, hateful ash.

Yusuf turns, letting him see his blade in answer.

His brother rolls over, facing the wall. “Don’t come back.”

“I am sorry.” Was it his fault? Did Iblis put him in this family to ruin their lives? They had been happy once. They had sailed and traded across the Roman Sea and if Yusuf closes his eyes he can feel the fresh spray still on his face, the smell, the laughter and the shriek of sea birds. Oh, but they had been so _happy_.

Then their parents died of fever, and Misaq had become a different man with the burdens of the business on his shoulders. Yusuf had taken refuse in the university, but eventually the rumors about him had become impossible to ignore-

Yusuf looks at Misaq, one more time. The sharp edges of his brother’s backbone and shoulderblades jut against his worn robe.

“Just go.”

He wants to say something. _I love you_ dies, poisoned, on his tongue.

His skin crawls with the memories of those hands holding a blade at his throat, his brother spitting, _Do it or by God, I will kill you right_ _here._

He turns away and steps out into the chill of the night. It’s easier to think about the hunger than the memories. Better the gnawing in his belly than the writhing within his flesh, as though every remembered touch had left a thousand burrowing worms under his skin.

Perhaps he would meet the crusader ghul tonight. Being cut open feels like something he could look forward to. Besides, that may be the answer. Yusuf gives a weary smile. Even if this seventh death is not enough, what happens if one ghul devours another? They could feed on each other forever, endlessly regrowing what has been devoured, and not harm anyone else.

It’s the closest thing he’s come to hope in a very long time.

* * *

The attack comes after nightfall.

Nicolo is curled up between the edge of a half collapsed tent and a rock, trying to stay out of the wind, burrowing down to try and recapture some of the sun’s heat trapped in the sand. To make Hell quite this cold- the devil really is wonderfully inventive. His cloak doesn’t do much against the biting chill of it, and his bedroll was stolen less than two days after they made land. He grits his teeth to stop them chattering, knuckles pressed against his stomach over the gnawing ache in his belly. Swallows and swallows again to try and coax some moisture out of his desiccated body.

It’s the distant crunch of boots on sand that draws him out of his doze. He lifts his head and squints against the spluttering light of the dying fires, the perimeter torches. Around the edges of the flames, figures are moving.

For a moment, Nicolo wonders about doing nothing. Closing his eyes and lying down again and waiting to die. He grits his teeth instead, swallowing past the knot of sand in his throat and dragging his sword up, digging the blade into the sand to lever himself the rest of the way to his feet. He wavers; his head aches and the flame-blinded sky revolves around him. Nicolo gathers himself, and screams out the alarm.

The camp swarms like an overturned ant’s nest. The snarl of blades drawing, the skittering scramble for shields and armor. The attackers give up the pretense of stealth and charge for the half finished battering ram. Soot- blackened blades flash out, their edges soon gleaming with blood. Nicolo throws himself forwards, not so much running as endlessly falling, feet catching him just before he’d crash to the ground.

He’s one of the first to join the fray, not bothering with armor or a shield: simply swinging his sword around double handed against the weight.

He’s slow. God in heaven but he has _never_ been this slow. The thirst, the exhaustion, the despair all weighs down on him and his sword moves as if through water.

The only mercy is that their enemies have been just as tormented by his hell as they have. The first man he encounters stumbles, falling flat on his back to avoid the blade. His eyes flare in the firelight, the fear and terror unable to hide the fact that this is a child maybe half Nicolo’s age.

The follow-through should have cut the boy in half. _Should_. Maybe it’s weariness that slows him just that little more. Maybe it’s the realisation, those few days ago, of just how _pointless_ this is. Nicolo does not want to be the tool of the devil in this torture.

And, thankfully, he does not have to be. A blade slides down to meet his, the scarred edge of his longsword scraping off slivers of damp ash from the saif. He doesn’t need to turn his head to know who it is.

Everyone he had set sail with from Genoa is dead, and the men of his company are so blasted and twisted by this place that they resemble the demons that inhabit it. It’s a relief to look at someone whom he has not witnessed tear into others for a scrap of bread or a mouthful of water. Someone not so maddened by thirst that they dig into the weakest of their comrades for the blood in their veins. He meets his Saracen’s eyes, and lifts his blade in something of a salute.

His Saracen nods in acknowledgement then grits his teeth in hard determination as he hurls himself between Nicolo and the rest of his men, forcing his wasted weight against his saif to drive Nicolo back a step. He mutters something, neat white teeth flaring against the tangle of his beard. Nicolo twists his sword away, steps back again to riposte- but his Saracen is there already; too close. The scimitar hammers down inches from Nicolo’s face, shearing down the longsword to catch on the crossguard.

The Saracen is still pushing, trying to shove Nicolo further away from his cohort. More are rising from the camp and charging to engage the raiding group, but his Saracen doesn’t seem to care. His eyes are narrowed, mouth pressed into a tight line. He looks exhausted, but determined to keep fighting. His eyes are fixed on Nicolo, as though everything around them has fallen away, leaving the two of them cocooned in blades, nothing but the fight.

Nicolo feels his mouth curl into a grim smile. _What is there to fight for?_ He wants to ask. _We are both dead in hell. What more is there to struggle over?_

The skirmish surges around them. Men are baying, screaming and dying. The madness of battle seizing them and, maybe, a few weeks ago, Nicolo could have been among them. The devil blinding them; driving them to wreak death in his name, all the while screaming God’s name. Is that not the most ironic and cruel joke of this place?

A man falls, almost on top of them. A second man plunges his blade into the his stomach and tears him open, guts spilling out like the coils of some endless serpent on the sand, tangling against their feet.

His Saracen freezes for a moment, eyes fixed on the carnage and wide in horror. The sudden break in his attack makes Nicolo stumble forwards. For a moment they are so close, Nicolo can feel his breath on his own lips. He wants to say- something. _I know what’s happening_. _We are damned._

_I’m sorry._

His lips move, but maybe his Saracen takes it for a threat, because he twists, and suddenly there’s the bite of something cold and burning just above his hip. Nicolo looks down and the saif has cut through his stomach almost to the spine, a deep gash of black blood pumping out onto the sand.

Oh. _Again_. It’s becoming easier to die than it is to fall asleep. The cold drains out of him, numbness replacing it, his legs buckle and they both collapse backwards onto the sand. Nicolo drags his sword up, and manages to draw the blade under his Saracen’s ribs. Blood washes over his hands, his legs. Those dark eyes go wide for a moment, then close wearily. His Saracen’s body goes limp on top of him and, for a moment before the darkness closes over him and pulls him down in blissful nothing, Nicolo feels warm.

* * *

When Yusuf opens his eyes the crusader ghul is already awake. He must have rolled off him as some point in their shared death, but they are still close enough to touch. It’s not the first time they’ve woken like this- side by side, close as lovers. The last time, the crusader ghul had screamed and crushed his head with a rock. This time, he doesn’t move, watching Yusuf with dulled eyes.

No, Yusuf thinks. This one doesn’t know what he is. He doubts a true ghul would look quite this weary, this hopeless. He came here to kill Yusuf and his people, desecrate the holiest shrines, murder women and children. Yusuf came here because his brother hoped the journey to Jerusalem and then a Hajj to Mecca would cleanse him once and for all. And now they are both here, lying on a battlefield listening to the dying around them.

The hunger clenches. Death had given him a brief respite, but there is no escape. Yusuf can smell the gore and waste of the spilled entrails a few feet away already putrefying. The thought that he would soon look on that as a meal shatters something inside him. Despair and desperation and his submission to fate fragmenting into a mindless chorus of: _no no please no don’t want it please I don’t want to_ -

He’d begged his brother like that once. It hadn’t done anything then, either.

And it’s too much. Too big. The emotions are so huge and awful they can’t fit inside him, and he feels engorged and at risk of bursting, like a bloated corpse left too long in the sun. He turns and drives his face into the reeking, blood-poisoned earth, and starts to cry.

He tries to stop, choke it down, swallow it back. He is in the middle of an enemy camp, inches from his enemy, and this only heaps dishonor upon more dishonor, and dear merciful Allah why is he not allowed to die? Why does it not _end?_ His seventh death has come and gone and how many are left?

A hand brushes his cheek, knuckles rough on the edge of his beard. Yusuf starts, flinching away. The crusader has dragged himself a little closer, his face mirroring Yusuf’s in sorrow and pain and on the verge of tears himself. He knows. The crusader knows the truth, and, whatever crimes he has committed or planned to commit, no man deserves this.

He can see the sympathy in his crusader’s eyes, his hand gentle and warm on Yusuf’s cheek. He doesn’t think Yusuf deserves this either. Yusuf grabs onto his hand and holds on as though the ground would swallow him up if he let go.

* * *

The Saracen's grip is almost painful, his face twisted and wretched with misery and pain. It should feel good to see it, the despair of his enemy. But Nicolo just looks at the man's broad, handsome face and feels nothing but the yawing maw of hopelessness inside him. They are trapped, and it doesn't matter, oh by the bloody wounds of Christ is _doesn't matter_. There will be no salvation from this place. They could convert every last Saracen in this city and pray together on the Mount of Olives and there will be no escape. God has turned his back on them, and the devil will never let them go.

The breath catches in his throat, and for a moment he too is at risk of weeping, spilling precious water to the sands. He had truly _believed_ that he could reach redemption. That no matter how foul and corruption-riddled he might be; that he could reach Grace in the hands of Christ and finally be free of worldly misery and temptation. He had suffered and suffered and had thought it brought him closer to God and- it was for nothing. The devil took him anyway.

His breath hitches, and he closes his eyes. His body is so wrung of moisture that he can’t cry. “Shh, shh.” The Saracen murmurs, not letting go of his hand.

For one moment there is nothing but them. If Nicolo breathes through his mouth he can ignore the cloying smell of rot and death around them. They are a little way from the camp, and the sounds are muffled. For a moment, just a moment, he can cling to this frail shred of peace, small and delicate as a fragment of spun glass.

"What is your name?" The man speaks in clear and perfect Greek. It doesn't break the peace, just, underlines it.

"Does it matter?" Nicolo's Greek is uncertain, old words unfamiliar in his mouth, slurred.

A hoarse laugh, "Who else is left to care?"

Nicolo opens his eyes. Even this far from the camp the fires and torches are bright enough to blind the sky into a dull and dusty black, only the faintest stars visible. No, no one is left to care. Nicolo isn't sure anyone ever did. Maybe that's why he came here, one last desperate attempt to prove he was worthy of something, some recognition in the eyes of the Lord even if no one else would notice his passing. Probably nobody had. The news of their ship's loss would have elicited a shrug from the church, and not even that from his family. No one is praying for him. There is no one here who even knows his name. This man is the first who has bothered to ask.

"Nicolo," he says finally.

The man nods, "Yusuf."

It feels like he should say it, "I am sorry I killed you." He had been the tool of the devil, causing pain. "No more." The words are raw and painful in his throat.

That gets a small smile from the Saracen- Yusuf. His beard is speckled with sand, teeth smeared red with blood, but the smile presses little crinkles in the corners of his eyes, gentles the weary lines of his face. "Better me than anyone else. The others would not rise again."

Nicolo shakes his head, as much to shake away the image of the man- _the boy_ \- he had almost run through earlier that night, as to deny Yusuf's words. "They are already dead."

A pause, another huff of sad amusement. "Is that what you are telling yourself? There is no killing us because we are all already corpses?"

"We are all corpses." Nicolo insists, a flash of rage licking the inside of his cracked and aching throat. He had thought this man _understood_. "We are all dead, and this is hell."

Yusuf turns towards him, curling his too thin body against the chill of the night. "Jahannam," He murmurs. "What are you doing in my hell, then? Don't your people separate the sinners of faith from the unbelievers? Or were we both wrong and the Jews are laughing at us?"

The look of horror on Nicolo's face elicits a small smile, softening his eyes. "Oh, hush. No, this is not hell. You cannot pretend that you are killing demons instead of men."

"I pretend nothing." Nicolo grits his teeth. His voice is growing thin and rasping, he hasn't spoken so many words in weeks and he is _so thirsty_. "We kill you and you kill us, and the devil laughs at all of it."

Yusuf closes his eyes. "That part, yes. I think the devil knows both of us very, very well." He leans closer, looking at Nicolo's thin, exhausted face; the deep bruises under his eyes; the cracked and peeling skin of his lips. "And he would hate me doing this, so please take it to spite him."

He reaches into his robes and passes small leather flask to Nicolo. He can _hear_ the water. His hands slip on the flask and he almost drops it, drags out the stopper with his teeth and _drinks_ _._ Drinks and drinks and drinks until he's shuddering with it. Freezing and shivering as though in the aftermath of orgasm. Finally it drains dry and he drops it to the sand, too overwhelmed even to thank Yusuf.

"Shh," His hand is taken again, a thumb rubbing slow circles on the back of his hand and suddenly everything Nicolo is, is screaming to close the space between them, press his body feet to head against this man's, just for the sheer _humanity_ of touch. And there is no Prior or Abbot to see, a slightly hysterical part of his mind gibbered. No one to see, no reason to fear the punishments they would concoct. He draws in a breath, lets it out, swallows to keep down the well of liquid sitting in his stomach. He grips Yusuf's hand in return, then claws up his arm to lock on his forearm, skin warm and soft with hair. "Better?"

Nicolo nods. What is this man doing in hell? A man who gives an enemy water in the desert is not a man who should be here. Even an infidel should at least expect to be granted purgatory for such kindness. He wonders, for the first time, if perhaps the entire crusade had been damned from the start. Had it _all_ been a trick, a way for the devil to enrich his forces and torment Christians and heretics alike?

"Thank you." He breathes. He can feel Yusuf's pulse under his fingertips, strong and steady. "I wish I could- give you something back. But there is no water; and the food-"

"Yes." The grip tightens on his arm. "I know what you eat. Have you-" he looks at the corpses, and back towards the camp.

Nicolo gritted his teeth, shame crawling in his belly. In the abbey, they had told hideous tales of the savagery of the Saracens; that they roasted babies for their satanic rites, cut off the breasts of maidens and ate them raw. Once in hell, it seems his fellow Christians had been quick to adopt these practises. "No. Not that." He'd been offered, a few times, but his soul had withered at the thought. He'd stopped eating meat at all, claiming fast, just in case.

"Do not." The man's hand is almost painful on his arm, nails digging in insistently. "Do you understand? If you do it, you are lost." He waits until Nicolo nods, then relaxes a little. "That is the truth of us; _we_ are the ghuls, the foul spirits, my sorry friend. Iblis wants us to become his tools, and feast on our own people.”

Nicolo stares at him in horror. No. No, this was madness, this infidel was telling him senseless horrors, trying to scare him-

“You feel the hunger,” his voice is gentle. “You’ve resisted it, like I have, but you feel it too.”

“No,” he whispers, “You are wrong, this is- we are in hell. We are not these-“ he cannot think of a word in Greek the encompass the horror, but… is it so impossible, when so many of his countrymen have fallen to this madness?

Yusuf shakes his head, as though he could see Nicolo’s thoughts. “What creatures are we that we do not die? What unnatural monsters can-“

“Stop.” He begs. “Please.” But oh, it makes only too much sense. They had been right, both of them seeing only half of the truth. He, Nicolo, had seen the nature of this realm, but Yusuf had been the one to realise what they were. Demons, sent to torment these wretched souls in the name of Satan. “What can we do?”

Yusuf lets go of his arm, leaving a miserable void inside Nicolo at the sudden lack, and sits up. “Leave.” He says softly. “Both of us, we must go and stay away from men, so we are not tempted to devour them.”

_Leave?_ In all the horrors of the last few months, Nicolo had not so much as considered that. There had been nowhere to go, even before he’d understood what had truly happened to them. The thought sets a tangle of terror and exhilaration in his stomach “Will the devil let us escape?” He breathes, hardly daring to say it, in case the evil one were to overhear.

“I hope he tries to stop us.” Yusuf digs his saif out from the battlefield carrion, trying to clean the edge. “I have reason to want to meet him.” His face sets in those very familiar, taut lines, ready to fight- and for once, it’s not aimed at Nicolo.

He looks like hope. Thin and starved but his eyes are burning with life, staring down all this horror but still determined to keep going. He’s stared into the abyss that has had Nicolo collapsing in despair and he will not give up. He’s the most beautiful thing Nicolo can remember, can imagine. Whatever happens after this, perhaps there might be some redemption for them, after all.

Yusuf gets up carefully, staying low enough not to be seen, then holds out his hand for Nicolo to take it. Nicolo takes a breath, gathers what is left of his faith, and puts it in this man. There is no space for god here, and the one who rules here mocks their prayers. They have no one to believe in but each other.

He takes Yusuf’s hand, and drags up his sword from the wreckage of the battle. Step by step, breath by breath, they crawl away from the camp, the walls of Jerusalem, into the desert.

“We tell that the devil was once an angel,” Nicolo murmurs, when they are far away from the camp that it is no more than a glow on the horizon, and the stars spill out in unparalleled brilliance across the sky, “And that he and his hosts once rebelled against Heaven, to be cast down here. Is it impossible that demons who rebel against Hell may be cast up to Heaven?”

“Would ghuls have a place in Heaven?” Yusuf’s face is just visible in the star light, his skin shimmers silver, sand dusts his hair like tiny diamonds. “Would we have anything to speak of, with those blessed with Paradise? Would we share any pleasures with them?”

It’s nothing Nicolo hasn’t thought of before; and now, with this man so very close and, despite everything, somehow so beautiful. The memories come back and squat in his stomach like a toad, his back itching in remembered pain. No, there would be no place for that in Heaven; there had barely been any space for it on the Earth.

But perhaps, perhaps- they could craft such a place in Hell? “Then we stay here. We will fight the devil if we find him, and spite him if we cannot. Like you spited him, in giving me your water.”

And Yusuf laughs, suddenly and so vibrantly that Nicolo is struck dumb with the beauty of it. It _hurts_ to see, such beauty after so many horrors. “Oh, yes, that would be wondrous.” He smiles at Nicolo, holds his hand tightly, “He has made us to be scourges and monsters onto mankind, and how would it be if we were to refuse that? How disappointed he would be!”

And what can Nicolo do but smile back? It reminds him of how he should have felt, all those months and a thousand worlds ago, in Genoa. The fierce pride, the purpose, the knowledge that he was doing something blessed. He’d felt none of it back then, all he could remember was the taste of desperation, the terror of knowing how damned he was, that only this bloody sacrifice gave him any chance of salvation.

Perhaps there is one good thing about Hell, because that fear is gone. He looks down at his hand in Yusuf’s, and there is no shame left, no terror. The worst has, after all, already happened.

“Let me travel with you.” It comes out suddenly, surprising him. “Whatever we are- demons or ghuls- we are the same. Let me walk this road by your side, wherever it leads. If to battle, you know I can fight, and if not- I can try and keep you from temptation, as you can keep me.”

It’s not a good speech, he stumbles over the words and he’s fairly sure the tense went wrong at least once, but he means it so desperately he might have written it out in his own blood. Yusuf looks at him and for a truly terrifying moment, Nicolo is certain he will refuse.

Then he smiles, small and weary, and nods. “Yes, and if we find others like us, perhaps we can turn them to this path too.”

Ahead of them, the horizon is slowly turning pink with the dawn. Behind then, the faint, distant sounds of battle are fading, like the snarls of some great beast, frustrated in its hunt.


End file.
